Vision Award

Aphesa is a finalist of the 2014 Vision Award with the project "High temperature, high pressure, colour, dual camera with live JPEG compression and HDR capability for oil well inspection".

The Vision Award recognizes the greatest innovation in Machine Vision over the past two years and six projects from six companies have been declared finalists among many more entries. The winner will be announced during a ceremony at the Vision Show.

It is the second time that Aphesa enters the Vision Award contest; our EMVA1288 test equipment was proposed in 2011.

At Aphesa, we like to work on challenging engineering projects and therefore several of our projects are good candidates to participate to the Vision Award which is only organized once every two years.

The oil and gas industry requires greater inspection of oil wells. Such wells can be up to 40,000 feet deep and contain dirty fluid under high pressure and temperature due to the depth. Until a few years ago there were no cameras dedicated for this market; the existing cameras were low performance monochrome analogue cameras and could not fulfil the requirements of today's technical challenges.

The typical defects to be inspected are cracks, pipe rusting, water injection, broken pipes, objects blocking the flow, broken valves, fallen tools to be recovered, and many others. The video must be transmitted to an operator at the surface and evidence must be recorded as still images or as video for further investigation. For certain applications the video is not transmitted and is recorded inside the camera.

The main challenges for cameras operating in these environments include: temperatures that can exceed 125Ā°C and pressure that can reach 15,000 psi or 1,000 bar; no light, all lighting is provided by the camera; limited power, as the current has to travel along a 40,000ft long conductor; limited bandwidth; narrow pipes with bends and section changes; and fail operational and fail safe approaches on some design elements.

Due to the limited memory storage or transmission bandwidth, the images must be compressed. A live JPEG compression with an adjustable compression level and programmable quantification tables is implemented.

The camera is equipped with two automotive-grade colour image sensors and LED lighting. One sensor looks down the hole and the other view is from the side of the camera to inspect the pipeās surface. The camera is capable of rotating 360 degrees to scan the pipeās entire inner surface.

Several power optimisation, stand-by, and cooling techniques are used in order to reach the required temperature range.

The whole camera measures less than five centimetres in diameter and is more than three metres long (excluding weight bars). The camera head itself, developed by Aphesa, is only a fraction of that length.

The project is the result of two years of collaboration between Aphesa and several other companies, one being a top 10 oil and gas service company that specialises in well interventions. Aphesa is an image sensor, camera and HDR (high dynamic range) company, and develops cameras and lighting systems for customer specific applications.

Floor plan, how to reach us

Aphesa will be located at the back of hall 1, on booth 1B80, next to the forum. After you enter hall 1 from the main entrance, east, walk all the way to the forum and turn left in the last aisle. Aphesa is the second booth on the right and directly at the forum.

We will also be present on booth 1B09, International Machine Vision Standards.

Our distributor EURECA Messtechnik will be exhibiting next to us at 1C74.

The picture below indicates on the floor plan of Hall 1 how Aphesa can be reached.

Each redeemed code will give you the right to invite three colleagues free of charge. You can do this on the Messe Stuttgart website at the bottom of the registration form.

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Win a free EMVA1288 measurement run during Vision

Win a free EMVA1288 measurement run during the Vision Show.

Just leave your business card in the dedicated box on our booth 1B80 and fill in the short participation form. One business card will be randomly picked at the end of the show. You can bring any standard camera for measurement and you will only need to pay for the shipping costs.

Aphesa develops custom cameras and custom electronics including FPGA code and embedded software. We also provide EMVA1288 test equipment and test services as well as consulting and training in machine vision and imaging technologies. Aphesa works in several markets including industrial, medical, oil&gas and security.